Sept. 23, 2010
Arlington, Texas - Last week the men's and women's tennis teams got a chance to get their feet wet at two separate tournaments. This week the women's team travels to the Sooner Fall Invitational while the men's team prepares for competition at the HEB Baylor Invitational.
The invitational consists of 16 schools with over 90 student-athletes participating. The field includes seven players currently ranked in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's (ITA) national pre-season rankings including five of the top 30. In addition to an impressive singles draw, six of the competing doubles teams are ranked in the ITA's national pre-season poll.
"We are excited about this weekend tournaments both will have a very tough field," said Head Coach Diego Benitez. "There will be a lot of opportunities to face rank players and that will improve our individual rankings."
Mindaugas Celedinas, Brieuc Hamon, Jason Lateko, Nicolas Moreno and Giacomo Sano will represent the Mavericks at this weekend's tournament.
The tournament will consist of a 64-player singles A draw and a 32-player singles B draw, as well as a 32-team doubles A draw and a 16-team doubles B draw. There will be consolation matches for flight A and B singles.
Teams participating include: Air Force, Auburn, Baylor, Idaho, Maryland, New Mexico State, Oklahoma State, Purdue, Rice, TCU, Texas A&M, Texas A&M-CC, Texas Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette, and UT-Pan American.
"We have wins over a top-50 nationally rank player on the women side and plenty of wins over Big 12 and Conference USA players in the men side. I feel we have accomplished a great deal on our conditioning workouts this fall, now is time to play some major tennis," added Benitez!
The women's team is coming off a pretty successful weekend at the Midland Invitational where newcomer Natalia Mayuk captured a win over Tulsa's Alexandra Kichoutkin, who was ranked 47th in the ITA women's rankings.
Four Maverick players will represent the university in the tournament. The lineup consists of senior Monika Hadvigerova, newcomers Mayuk, Linda Aqvist, and Giada D'ortona. Mayuk and Aqvist will team up in doubles while Hadvigerova and D'Ortona will be paired up.
The Sooner Fall Invitational will feature players from Arkansas, Arkansas-Little Rock, DePaul, North Texas, Oklahoma State, OU, Portland, SMU, Texas Tech, Tulsa and Wichita State. Seven of the 11 teams, including the Sooners, finished last season ranked nationally by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association.
Competition begins Friday at 9 a.m.
